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An imaginative, narratological reading of Chinua Achebe's novels, stories, poetry, and essays through a literary and historical framework. Toyin Falola analyzes fictional and historical cartographies of Africa in Achebe's literary works to offer a critical representation of Africa's present and future. In particular, he focuses on the historical valuation of a full range of the writer's works – novels including Things Fall Apart, but also short stories, poems, and essays – as important materials that have contributed to the political events in Nigeria and, by extension, Africa. The raw creativity found in Achebe's stories and his ability to tell the Nigerian story – precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial – have endeared him to many, including readers and those critical of him and his works. Chinua Achebe: Narrating Africa in Fictions and History analyzes all of the writer's works, dwelling on the Nigerian political context upon which many, if not all, of his narratives lie. As a result, it examines methodologies of narration and ideologies that allow his works to resonate with the imagination of Africa.
Things Fall Apart, set in Nigeria about a century ago, is widely regarded as Chinua Achebe's masterpiece. Considered one of the most broadly read African novels, Achebe's work responded to the two-dimensional caricatures of Africans that often dominated Western literature. This invaluable new edition of the study guide contains a selection of the finest contemporary criticism of this classic novel.
This is a brilliant and refreshing book, which gives ample and well-deserved voice to women...It is a book that will definitely be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of history, anthropology, political science, religion, and political economy. It is a must read for scholars and students in Women's Studies Programs. - Felix K. Ekechi; Professor Emeritus(History); Kent State University This orginal and insightful work's sensible and balanced view of Igbo women's power and authority is modulated by a profound understanding of the ways in which women negotiated indigenous cultural spaces and at the same time negotiated with and refashioned pre-colonial and colonial contexts. Farm...
As the first book-length work on the history of Chinese presence in Nigeria, this book examines how Chinese migrants and the Nigerian state, workers, traders, and consumers interacted with and influenced one another from the mid twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. Based on a combination of archival sources and oral history interviews, this book argues that the significant Chinese presence in Nigeria—Chinese-owned factories, commodities, and entrepreneurs—is not as recent a phenomenon as it might appear. As early as the 1950s, an influential yet understudied group of Chinese entrepreneurs moved to Nigeria, set up factories and gradually came to dominate some of the countr...
The Igbo are one of the most populous ethnic groups in Nigeria and are perhaps best known and celebrated in the work of Chinua Achebe. In this landmark collection on Igbo society and arts, Toyin Falola and Raphael Chijioke Njoku have compiled a detailed and innovative examination of the Igbo experience in Africa and in the diaspora. Focusing on institutions and cultural practices, the volume covers the enslavement, middle passage, and American experience of the Igbo as well as their return to Africa and aspects of Igbo language, society, and cultural arts. By employing a variety of disciplinary perspectives, this volume presents a comprehensive view of how the Igbo were integrated into the Atlantic world through the slave trade and slavery, the transformations of Igbo identities and culture, and the strategies for resistance employed by the Igbo in the New World. Moving beyond descriptions of generic African experiences, this collection includes 21 essays by prominent scholars throughout the world.
Homosexuality was and still is thought to be quintessentially 'un-African'. Yet in this book Chantal Zabus examines the anthropological, cultural and literary representations of male and female same-sex desire from early colonial contacts between Europe and Africa in the nineteenth century to the present. Covering a broad geographical spectrum, from Mali to South Africa and from Senegal to Kenya, and adopting a comparative approach encompassing two colonial languages (English and French) and some African languages, 'Out in Africa' charts developments in Sub-Saharan African texts and contexts through the work of 7 colonial and some 25 postcolonial writers.
An unapologetically African-centered monograph that reveals physical and spiritual forms and systems of female power and leadership in African cultures. Nwando Achebe’s unparalleled study documents elite females, female principles, and female spiritual entities across the African continent, from the ancient past to the present. Achebe breaks from Western perspectives, research methods, and their consequently incomplete, skewed accounts, to demonstrate the critical importance of distinctly African source materials and world views to any comprehensible African history. This means accounting for the two realities of African cosmology: the physical world of humans and the invisible realm of sp...
Covers the history of the entire African continent, from prehistory to the present day A Companion to African History embraces the diverse regions, subject matter, and disciplines of the African continent, while also providing chronological and geographical coverage of basic historical developments. Two dozen essays by leading international scholars explore the challenges facing this relatively new field of historical enquiry and present the dynamic ways in which historians and scholars from other fields such as archaeology, anthropology, political science, and economics are forging new directions in thinking and research. Comprised of six parts, the book begins with thematic approaches to A...
While providing critical perspectives on women, gender, sex and sexuality, and the colonial encounter, she considers how it was possible for this woman to take on the office and responsibilities of a traditionally male role.
One of the most engaging, and unavoidable questions in the study of literature is the relationship between the events of an artist's life and his work. The author of this study contends that you cannot separate the two - she 'met' Achebe through Things Fall Apart. Knowing something of the biography of Achebe is crucial to gaining a more in-depth understanding of the man - and thus of the work. This authorised oral biography is compiled from interviews with family members, servants, and personal and professional friendships. It retraces the writer's steps from his hometown of Ogidi to Europe, and the U.S.; and considers his literary and political activities, his identities as an Africa, a Nigerian and an Igbo, and traits of his personality. The biographer recounts personal anecdotes in the biographer's exploration of a writer whom she characterises, on the one hand as a complex and conflicting personality; and on the other, as someone whose true concerm is for the well-being of the human community. The author is a Professor of English who has held posts at several North American and African universities; and has been a friend and colleague of Achebe's for some thirty years.